By Michael J. Tittinger
A very dear friend took some time recently to read for me her favorite poem — “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold. It was a poem with which I was not previously familiar, but there it was — smack on page 794 of my “Anthology of Poetry” textbook from college.
“The sea is calm to-night” “The tide is full, the moon lies fair…” she began.
And while art is eternally open to interpretation, upon my first exposure to the poem I was struck by the continual references to reminders past, both good and bad, and how one symbolic object can represent one and the same. In this case, the ocean moves Arnold to tears. It is now seemingly retreating, when in years past it was crashing forth with wave after wave of optimism.
What once represented love and serenity and contentment, now only serves to render sadness and confusion and loneliness.
“The Sea of Faith” “Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore”
“Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d.”
“But now I only hear” “Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,” “Retreating, to the breath” “Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear”
“And naked shingles of the world.” Symbols such as the one Arnold speaks of — the eternal sea outside his English estate — exist in each of our lives on one level or another. I was reminded of one such symbol last summer when an article appeared in the Daily Press detailing the refurbishment of the former Crocker Bank Building (“Downtown clock tower to begin ticking again,” July 7). The depression-era art-deco treasure of a building is capped with a clock tower frozen in time.
Time stopped at the Crocker Building, as it did for so many in and around the city of Santa Monica, at precisely 4:17 a.m., Jan. 17, 1994, when the Northridge earthquake struck a sleeping and unsuspecting Southern California. A decade later, today, reconstruction projects abound throughout the area, including the UCLA Medical Center across the street from me, where jackhammers and power drills have become my alarm clock by default.
Ever since moving to Santa Monica in recent years I have heard story upon story about that day — where people were, what they were doing, how they responded and rebuilt their lives — a day no one who lived here will forget, to be sure, nor should they forget. For Santa Monicans, it is a day akin to the moon landing, O.J.’s white Bronco “getaway” and 9-11 in terms of sheer “Where were you?” indelibility.
Yet, maybe it is time we let go. Maybe it is time we forged ahead.
I have driven, jogged or walked past the Crocker clock tower hundreds of times since finally landing here on the left coast, as have most of us when we are not so caught up in the hustle and bustle to take note of the majestic clock tower frozen at “4:17.”
For the aftershocks of the Northridge earthquake were felt across the nation, in more ways then we can possibly imagine.
“Are you awake?” I remember my mom calling upstairs. I seldom was. I had been working the graveyard shift at a printing company and couldn’t wait to quit. The week before, I had secured a job with a Santa Monica production company some 3,000 miles away from my childhood home. My clothes and possessions were packed neatly into a series of boxes sitting idle in the center of my stripped-down boyhood bedroom.
“Yeah … why?” “Did you hear what happened out in California?”
Soon after, my plane tickets were refunded, my job with the now-defunct production company nixed and my pre-drafted resignation letter for the printing plant was filed away for another day. But those boxes remained, sitting idle in the center of my room. I had neither the heart nor the will to unpack them for weeks, maybe months. Once a symbol of optimism and excitement and the future, they had since come to symbolize isolation and frustration and the past. “… For the world, which seems” “To lie before us like a land of dreams,” “So various, so beautiful, so new,” “Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,”
“Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;”
“And we are here as on a darkling plain” “Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,”
“Where ignorant armies clash by night.” Those boxes stacked in the middle of my room vexed me for the longest time, as my dreams of faraway success seemed swallowed up by an earthquake across the country while I slept. But, as it always does, time ticked on … life moved on. Eventually, it was time to unpack those boxes. Eventually, it was time to stop dwelling on the past and begin looking to the future anew.
Ultimately, I did move to Santa Monica, and upon reflection, the life experiences I had during those interim years changed my life in ways I couldn’t have imagined — there was love and loss, euphoria and sorrow. But the image of those stacked boxes sitting idle no longer vexes me. It has since taken on yet another meaning — rebirth and renewal.
Finally, it was time to move on, as should we all. It’s time to reset Santa Monica’s stopwatch and let time heal the wounds, not let them bleed and bleed. The Crocker clock tower, according to developers, will soon be ticking once again.
It’s time to create new memories and forge ahead. Let the symbols of the fleeting past be reborn and take on a positive meaning once again.
Let the Sea of Faith retreat no more.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 17, 2004. Read the original PDF.